Karl Rove was the political genius of the George W. Bush era -- the architect of the last Republican president's two electoral victories. But this week, he may have had the worst election night of anybody in American politics...

A study Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending, concluded that Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads, had a success rate of just 1 percent on $103 million in attack ads -- one of the lowest "returns on investment" (ROIs) of any outside spending group in this year's elections...

American Crossroads spent heavily, not just on Romney, but on attack ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates in eight states -- thanks to mega contributions from conservative donors like metals magnate Harold Simmons ($19.5 million), Texas homebuilder Bob Perry ($7.5 million) and Omni hotel chief Robert Rowling ($5 million.)

The super donors didn't get much for their money. Six of the eight GOP Senate candidates that American Crossroads spent money to try to elect – Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George Allen in Virginia, Josh Mandel in Ohio, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri – lost their races, along with Romney. The group did, on the other hand, help to elect Deb Fischer in Nebraska and Dean Heller in Nevada.

(The Sunlight Foundation calculation of "return on investment" was based on the percentage of money it spent on individual races-- and since Crossroads spent the most on the races it lost on, the group earned its low 1 percent "return on investment" or ROI. A sister group, Crossroads GPS, which operates out of the same offices as American Crossroads but does not disclose its donors, fared little better, netting a return on investment of only 13 percent, according to the Sunlight Foundation report.)

Some in his own party also were unimpressed by the performance of Rove's Crossroads operation. Donald Trump posted a message on Twitter saying: “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”

At last, Trump finally says something that makes sense!

Does this mean the fear of SuperPACs is overblown? I'd say it's way too early to jump to that conclusion. After all, this was only the second national election since Citizens United.

Does this mean the fear of SuperPACs is overblown? I'd say it's way too early to jump to that conclusion. After all, this was only the second national election since Citizens United.

It may just reflect on Karl Rove. He seems to be losing his touch:

Quote:

GOP strategist Karl Rove went on Fox News today to argue that President Barack Obama "succeeded by suppressing the vote" -- an argument that directly contradicts the conventional wisdom that Romney failed to appeal to non-white and female voters.

Rove argued that Obama won with a smaller popular vote and a smaller margin of victory than in the 2008 election against Sen. John McCain. Instead of expanding voters, Rove argued, Obama "suppressed the vote" by demonizing former Gov. Mitt Romney and encouraging people not to vote.

"President Obama has become the first president in history to win a second term with a smaller percentage of the vote than he did in the first term," Rove said.

Does this mean the fear of SuperPACs is overblown? I'd say it's way too early to jump to that conclusion. After all, this was only the second national election since Citizens United.

No.. the fear of SuperPACs is definitely not overblown. It is still a, if not the biggest FUBAR to come out of Citizens United. But what Obama did, was executed a well-played campaign strategy to fight the PACs. Yes, the Blues have SuperPACs and played along with the game as much as they could (they did get outraised by the Red PACs), but they countered that with getting more people involved, and used the Walmart effect: yes, you raise a little less money, but make up for it in volume. The volume was the number of people who voted, contributed, and worked on the entire campaign at the ground.

The Reds used money for ads, (some) fake stories passed as 'news', and the same shill served out by the same talking heads to do their work for them, but didn't back it up as much on the ground. That was their biggest problem. A few people with all the money will never be able to conquer the many other people with less, but banded together in volume. In short, Strength in Numbers.

Rove's campaign strategy, and no thanks to some idiots like Akin, Mourdock, Walsh, and Romney was the political equivalent of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Now, they have to deal with that aftermath, and it doesn't look pretty.

What I want to know is this, and I don't think the question has been asked yet. If Citizens United allows corporations to contribute heavily to political campaigns, and we know that people like Trump, Sheldon Alderson, the Kochs, etc. have contributed to it; assuming their corporations are public, meaning the shareholders have a stake in the company, if their corporations contributed to this PAC, and there was a huge loss from it, what do their shareholders/stockholders have to say about incurring such a huge loss? If a CEO lost that much money, the shareholders would have called an executive board meeting and put that CEO's head on a platter.

Could we possibly be seeing some heads roll at the corporation level, as not only is this the second election since Citizens United, but the first presidential election since Citizens United?

Does anyone know what Rove's fee was? Every 1% of fee is $3M in his pocket. I remember a West Wing episode where the political operative was negotiating a 3-5% fee. I would guess a "good" businessman like Rove would have demanded a premium.

Was it miniscule? Or did they purchase the transformation of what would have otherwise been a popular vote landslide into a comparatively close race? What would the results have looked like without all that spending?

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What's the point of a sig showing the system I owned in 2006?

Was it miniscule? Or did they purchase the transformation of what would have otherwise been a popular vote landslide into a comparatively close race? What would the results have looked like without all that spending?

You're probably right, but the big money guys just look at the end result, which is that he failed, and so did many other big money SuperPACs.